Ya take the good, ya take the bad, ya take em both and there ya have...

As far as this blog is concerned, my goal is not to get on here to complain and be negative. Because I know that I am one lucky girl. On the other hand, I want it to be an honest account of my experience living abroad in Spain. There are certainly some glorious and enriching aspects of living in another country but there are also the bad days.

Today I felt all kinds of weird emotions from exhausted to helpless to annoyed and most of all hopeless. Why all these negative feelings might you ask? Well, let me explain a little.

Often I get more exhausted here even though I am only working about 15 hrs a week. Because I am learning so much everyday, my brain reaches its threshold pretty quickly. The Andalucians are famous for their difficult to understand accent and people talk quite quickly here on top of it. They don't fully pronounce most of their words so I am always straining to understand. I must say that on the bright side, I do feel like my ears are tuning in a bit better.

Today at school I felt very helpless because we are seperated into 2 schools a couple blocks away from each other and instead of just giving me directions they had to walk me over and back from the other building because they thought I wouldnt understand. I pretty much have to have someone walk me to every single class that I teach because its an old palace and the rooms aren't numbered or labeled.

Then, I had to take the city bus after school to the police station to register as a foreigner with temporary residency in Spain. I had to take one bus across town then transfer to another bus to go north. Well, on the second connection I got on the right bus number but not going in the right direction. So, I ended up at the station at the southern end of town and asked the bus driver if I could just stay on to go the way that I was supposed to go in the first place. He said everybody has to get off the bus here. So, I thought "Well okay, I can do that. I will just get a transfer so that I don't have to pay again, get off and then right back on the same bus and go back in the direction I came from." But when I asked about a transfer he said I couldn't have one, something about having to change bus lines within an hour in order to get one??? And because I was taking the same bus I had to pay AGAIN. WTF!!! Anyhow....I did what I was told and rode all the way back to the north part of town.

I got off at Avenida Meditarreneo and walked over to the police station. When I got there, there was a large, authoritative looking man in street clothes standing out front blocking the entrance way. He asked what I needed and I told him that I needed to get an appointment to turn in my paperwork to get a Numero de Identifacion Extranjero and a Tarjeta de Identificacion Extranjero. He said "Come back tomorrow between 8:30 and 9am." And I said "I don't need an appointment then?" And he said "Yes, you come tomorrow between 8:30 and 9am to get your appointment for another day". For the love of God!!! Why does everything need to be so complicated? I was just so sick of running all over town just to do this one simple task of making a bloody appointment.

And now to end on a hopeless note like all good writers....I feel like I could actually be here for 9 months and never become fluent in Spanish. I know its only been three weeks but man this learning a second language thing is HARD. There are so many different ways of saying things but yet I always seem to choose the wrong one. My brain is so hardwired to speak English that I am constantly trying to say things the way I would in English. But thats not the way Spanish is spoken. It has reflexive verbs, the subjunctive mood, the preterite and the imperfect....14 verb tenses for the crying out loud. That is 2 more than in English. I cannot, for the life of me, get my brain around when to use and when not to use these 2 other verb tenses...BECAUSE THEY DON'T EXIST..in the language center of MY brain. It is too abstract for me to understand right now. AND I didn't think this would be a problem but for some reason I am also now mixing up my feminine and masculine when I use adjectives. I am also now messing up my 3rd person with my 2nd person or my singular verb conjugations with my plural conjugations...things that didn't used to happen to me in class.

What I've also come to understand is that when you are learning another language and are living it that target country you become two people rather than one. One person who is the self that you've come to know so well with your witty comebacks, good storytelling abilities or way with words. Then, there's the new part that can't even begin to compete with the former self. So, for now I am shy, have no sense of humor and can't explain my way out of a wet paper bag. Of course I don't like this new self, she sucks!!! Nobody could like her. So, I must find some way to emerge as the endearing foreigner who doesn't care what anyone thinks of her and has all sorts of diarrhea of the mouth with a rediculous accent to boot. I have to accept that I will be Fez from that 70s show for the next 8 months...and own it.

So, what I am hoping is that I can look back and laugh at this post. I hope I can say "wow!! you've come a long way baby. I can't believe you used to have that much trouble with the language cuz now its flowin like the sangria." Thats why I HAD to write this negative or not. Just to have record of it and to give hope to others who read my blog and are struggling with language or transition abroad like me. Its not all rainbows and unicorns people.